Founded by Manthan Pawar, a robotics industry veteran with a master’s degree from NYU Tandon and roughly eight years in U.S. supply chain and robotics, Destro has built an AI operating system called Vision that uses open-weight vision-language-action models to interpret camera images and instructions, directing robot movements.
Rather than focusing on hardware, Destro's approach is to orchestrate the entire workflow. Its Mothership operating system directs human workers, carts, and trucks in synchronised operations. A key early customer is Yusen Logistics, the South Korean shipping giant's American logistics group, where director of automation Richard Brunelle adapted Destro's original picking-and-packing focus to cross-docking: unloading goods from one truck and sorting them into mixed loads for other trucks.
"We make that operation less labor intensive, and we get away from the paper," Brunelle said. "Everything is now systematic."
Destro began with a pilot using three cart-moving robots from Miva Robotics. It is now expanding to a full deployment of 26 robots at that Yusen facility and launching another pilot with 17 robots at a Southern California location. According to Pawar, the company is on track to be cash flow positive by the end of the year.
Brunelle noted that Yusen had evaluated two other robotics startups, but neither could integrate into their cross-dock workflow as effectively. Destro's ability to apply autonomous direction to the entire process gave it the edge.